Poland sees considerable potential to strengthen cooperation with Taiwan, especially in the fields of trade and technology, Poland’s top envoy to Taiwan said.
“Taiwan is an attractive trade partner for Poland and, I believe, for other countries in central and eastern Europe,” Bartosz Rys, acting head of the Polish Office in Taipei, said in an interview with the Central News Agency.
Poland could be a great fit for Taiwanese companies looking to relocate their manufacturing or business operations to Europe due to its strategic location, good infrastructure, large domestic market, strong consumption and highly skilled workers, Rys said.
Photo courtesy of the Polish Office in Taipei via CNA
The potential for cooperation between Poland and Taiwan on electric vehicles (EV) could be particularly fruitful, he said.
“Poland is the biggest supplier of lithium-ion car batteries or their components in Europe. Overall, the prospects for cooperation between Polish and Taiwanese companies in the EV industry look very promising,” he said.
Rys also suggested that Taiwan could participate in the Three Seas Initiative and the Three Seas Initiative Investment Fund to strengthen its cooperation with nations bordering the Adriatic, Baltic and Black seas, in the development of infrastructure in the energy, transport and digital economy sectors.
The initiative is a forum of 12 EU states — Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
The initiative welcomes nations and enterprises that share the same basic values and principles to participate in specific projects, Rys said.
The acting representative also sees potential for Polish products in the Taiwanese market, ranging from beverages to chocolates and cosmetics to ceramics.
“Taiwanese consumers have shown great interest in Polish products and we are also receiving more queries from Polish companies on doing business in Taiwan,” he said. “I hope this growing mutual interest will result in new trade opportunities and ultimately more Polish products being available in Taiwan.”
In the areas of education and people-to-people exchanges, Rys said that more than 1,000 Taiwanese students are enrolled at Polish universities.
In addition, as many as 1,000 Taiwanese doctors who graduated from Polish medical universities have been on the front line fighting the COVID-19 outbreak in Taiwan, he said.
Poles are also now more aware of Taiwan’s rich culture and beautiful landscapes than they were several years ago, when most primarily saw Taiwan as a manufacturer of computers and consumer electronics, he added.
Rys also announced that Poland would be the Guest of Honor at the Taipei International Book Exhibition in 2023.
“This will be a great opportunity to delve into Polish culture and literature, and hopefully meet Polish writers in person,” Rys said. “We also expect a high-level delegation from Poland at the opening ceremony.”
Rys said Poland’s donation of COVID-19 vaccine shots to Taiwan “reflects our solidarity and desire to help those in need.”
A shipment of 400,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine donated by Poland arrived in Taiwan on Sept. 5, making the European nation Taiwan’s third-largest vaccine donor after Japan and the US.
“I personally hope our donation will help Taiwan speed up the vaccination rollout” and ensure more people are protected against COVID-19, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater